Ezra has come to a conclusion: he must drop out of college by the end of the semester. Amidst meeting new friends and rekindling neglected relationships, he'll say his goodbyes to an important chapter in his life and make way for the next.

Ezra
Doesn't have any other redeeming talents besides his interest in science. Majoring in biochemistry. His current situation leaves him feeling confused and unmotivated to plan for the future. He's not the nicest guy on the planet, but at least he tries.

Junya
Ezra's roommate and his long time best friend from childhood. He plays for the college football team. Junya's a guy with a sensitive heart and an open mind. It's very difficult to get him angry, but it's so much easier to make him cry.

Dion
A fellow student that meets Ezra's standards as a respectable as a lab partner. Though he's shorter than most guys and doesn't look his age, Ezra finds he's far from naive. He's composed and gives off that vibe that he knows more than he's letting on...

Lorenzo
Senior. IT major. Rumors have been going around claiming he's an apathetic robot, but Ezra finds he's all that plus a jerk. On the bright side, he fixes computers for a reasonable price.

Meera
Ezra's sister, who now works at a cafe near the campus since it's close to her high school. They don't really see each other often, but talk on the phone frequently.

Arlene
She grew up with Junya and Ezra. She's an aspiring architect, lover of the arts, and also Junya's ex-girlfriend. Through the years Ezra's known her, she's universally known as an angel, and Ezra is sometimes obsessed with trying to find her anything but that.

GAME NOTES

This is pretty much an alternate universe featuring the cast of a another VN I've been working on called Dakota Wanderers. Due to being busy with other projects, my progress for that visual novel hasn't gotten far in the script. Since the project started in 2013, I've been worried about keeping the interest I have for these characters, so I figured Yaoi Jam would be the perfect opportunity to let loose and write my characters freely. Happy to say that working on this game for the past two months has been a total blast! I'm very excited to release this demo, and hopefully the full release won't be too far off.

This demo is roughly 16k words and may take anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour of gameplay. I looked over the script as much as I could, but there's always the possibility of having errors. Let me know if you encounter any bugs or grammatical slip ups.

Also, any feedback on the demo would be much appreciated! The full release is still in the works, so any insight on how to improve the experience would be great. Thanks!

Currently what I have written is a little more than 30k. I don't plan on straying too far from my outline, which was more or less one route for each character.

PROJECT QUESTIONS
1. On your discovery of the game, does the premise interest you? (Would the synopsis benefit from being longer, or does the shortness of it make it interesting?)
2. Which character are you interested in?
3. Some expectations for the full game?
4. After playing the demo, any suggestions or critique?

Updates

[8/7/2016] Demo released in time for yaoijam deadline

[1/12/2017] After a long hiatus, I started picking back up on SB. Organized my outline for all my unwritten scenes.

[1/30/2017] Up to about 4k more to the script, nearly done with Dion's route.

[3/9/2017] +2k words, Romance scene for Dion complete

[3/25/2017] Dion's route is averaging more than 20k words! Woo! ^^

[5/22/2017] Dion's route and Junya's routes are completely finished.

[11/2/2017] Lorenzo's route is at 8k.

[1/12/2018] The writing is nearly finished! Lorenzo's route is at 28k, Dion's is at 21k, and Junya's is at 10k. (Sounds pretty short, but the majority of beginning are scenes with Junya to be fair). All that's left in the writing department is extra/non route scenes.

Last edited by Boniae on Fri Jan 12, 2018 9:54 pm, edited 8 times in total.

Oh boy, I haven't updated this thread in awhile! For anyone keeping track of this project, I'm slowly but surely chipping away at the progress in this. I just got done finishing up a super long romance scene for Dion (the scene itself is just about 7k words, but overall Dion's route is about 12k at this moment.) I have two more scenes to write in Dion's route until his side will be finished. The rest would be to work on Lorenzo's route and some extra story scenes.

To anyone interested in an in depth information about what needs to be done in the game, I have a post up here on my blog. It's kind of bummy with how slow this is going due to some other things I've been juggling outside of writing, but I'm really set on Sagebrush and want to see it complete. Thanks for checking in!

Another update! Things are looking pretty good for the game. Dion and Junya's routes are completely finished, and all that's left is Lorenzo's route and two or three big scenes. There's also little filler scenes (short map stuff when there's really no event) to do as well. Now that I've written quite a bit, I'm now going to shift my focus on programming the game and can hopefully start uploading some screenshots.

I've also added some project questions for any of those who are interested in the game. Thanks!

Glad to see you're still working on this! I liked Forget-Me-Not, so I'm looking forward to seeing you take on a longer story. I'm definitely interested in a story about a young adult who's trying to figure out what to do with his life, and Dion sounds really cute. Good luck with the rest of development!

So far, I love the character sprites, especially the main character(he's really cute, and easy to relate to. Been there, done that) . The university setting and slice of life theme is nice for a short visual novel like this, so I'm looking forward to play it!

MAJOR APOLOGIES for not getting to this thread sooner!! I'm never on top of LS threads, haha @o@;;

Still a bit slow on progress, but my time is freeing up, meaning I have more time to work on SB! I posted this on twitter awhile back, but here's a recent screenshot of Junya stuffing his face with funnel cakes

@parttimestorier; That means so much, thank you for the support!!! I'm glad to hear things are catching your interest as well @Ghost of Crux; AHHH MANN TY SO MUCH WHA--you're one of my favorite artists and developers TOO HAHA *cries* Thank you so much for the support!! TToTT@Ertal77; Haha, no worries--so many threads get bumped often! I'm glad it's piqued your interest!!

@PMscenarios; Thanks so much! Haha, I'm really glad you like Lorenzo! (I feel he isn't as popular because he comes off as a bully, haha X'D)

So another (long overdue, haha) update to the thread, since September I've been trying to chip away at writing the game again. This November I'm participating in NaNoWriMo and using Sagebrush as my novel, so here's to hoping a good portion of the writing (mostly Lorenzo's route) will be made by this month. Lorenzo's route is already at 8k, so we're looking good!

Also, I've recently commissioned Noyemi K for the game's soundtrack, and it sounds awesome. Hopefully I can upload previews sometime or at perhaps update the game's demo with the soundtrack by the end of this year.

Most of my updates will most likely be shared via my twitter if anyone's interested. Thanks for checking in!

Hello again! Great news everyone, the writing is (pretty much) done!!! I would say there's only about 5k or so left in terms of extra stuff, but all three routes are over with and I'm just importing the text into the game and trying to code it all. There's still such a long way to go in terms of art, though, but I'm hoping to get a huge chunk of work done this month while I'm taking a hiatus from my comic.

Also, if you've recently played the demo, I'd really appreciate if you could answer either of the project questions! It'll be very helpful for when I'm editing and changing my script.